From One Man in Baghdad

From One Man in Baghdad, who we have not heard from in a long time (at least on this blog). (OMIB, I don’t know if you’re reading, but the description below seems worthy of sharing):

“big big car bombs rumbling somewhere tonight. they have a special sound, distant lingering thunder without the cracking. and you think about the poor souls who have just bought it...”

Water, Wind, Fire

We climbed up a thin-railed ladder. It was at nearly 90 degrees and led into the sky. I could feel the rust flaking off in my hands. I could feel my sandals angling against each rung. I could feel the whiskey twirl in my head. We reached the top and sat on the platform, which was a series of flaking iron slats only about a foot and a half wide, and we watched the water ripple below us, maybe 60 feet down, and we wondered at the lit buildings. We had a time of it trying to light our cigarettes.

“I fell asleep up here once,” the Welder said.



Today I spent with One Man in Baghdad, who is, clearly, not in Iraq but in New York. We drank wine on a terrace in Tribeca and watched a storm gather on this 85-degree day. As we stood from the table, the wind whipped our empty bottle of Sancerre clear off. Waiters scooped up glasses and we ran down the stairs to the street to get to the subway as quickly as possible. At street level, wind hit us squarely. It was the Great Grit Bowl. I have never felt such force from wind; my dress was held securely down in the front only to fly directly up in the back—it was “like Marilyn Monroe…in a turbo jet engine,” OMiB said.



We flew into the subway station and witnessed a chase. A plainclothes cop led the manhunt as a Man in Blue hid behind a column. Suddenly, they sprinted. Off went the prey, a teenage boy in a striped polo. They ran—fast—down the platform and when they reached the end the kid jumped onto the tracks. We all gasped. Some of us shouted “No!” as he ran at full speed across the uptown tracks, the third rail, the downtown tracks. Four beats later the cops jumped in and crossed all the lanes too, only slightly more carefully. The three disappeared at the far end on the far side of all the tracks as the uptown 1 pulled in and OMiB and I sped off, grit-covered and stunned.

“The devil just came down from the sky,” he said.

“And I think we just watched him run across the tracks,” I said.

“'It was a beautiful warm day' is how the story would start,” he said. “There is some kind of thread here, we just have to find it.”

“Maybe it would end with: 'And the devil got away again,'” I said.

Not Boring

I awoke this morning to a phone call from Baghdad.

“Hello?”

“Hi, McBickle. This is _______, I’m a colleague of One Man in Baghdad’s.”

Pause. She says nothing.

He’s dead, I think. This is it. This is the phone call.

If he is not dead, he has been wounded. There has been another blast, this one too close, closer than the one last week 50 yards from his colleague’s car. Please, let him be okay. Let him not be dead.

My sleepy brain imagines it out, steels my breath; waits for words.

“I’m calling to ask for…”
…Something related to my work. She is calling about work.

“Holy crap,” I tell her. “I thought you were calling to tell me something had happened to OMiB. Christ.”

“No,” she laughs. “He’s right here. He says hi.”

“Christ,” I say. “Tell him hi back.”

Christing hell.

I take down information, tell her what I know, hang up the phone, close my eyes, breathe shallowly, marvel at the oddity of being awakened by a call from a war zone and thoughts of death. I think about how the faceless voice of a woman I’ve never met just raked me across the world from my slept-in bed in Brooklyn to a room I’ve never seen but envision as white-walled and sparsely furnished containing a man I care about deeply who drives me utterly batshit bananas because of incidents like this.

Goats, Guns, and a Mazda...Mit Commentary

Nigerian police detain goat over armed robbery

23 Jan 2009 15:40:22 GMT

Source: Reuters

LAGOS, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery. 

Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

"The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat," Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

"We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat," he said.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://af.reuters.com/ ) (Reporting by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Katie Nguyen)

------------

But, as One Man in Baghdad points out:

“It’s obvious that you want to catch it unawares with a surprise question, like
that moment in ‘The Dirty Dozen’ when a Nazi cop says, ‘Hello, how are you?’
to the escaped American prisoner who is getting on a city bus.”

Rockin' the Global Media

So here’s a phone call from a friend who needs help from the big guns: Can I please call One Man in Baghdad for a favor? The friend’s childhood friend’s parents are stuck in Beirut and frightened as hell. They’ve been standing in lines for eight hours at a time, in the broiling sun, 70-year-old stroke survivors, American citizens. Each time, they are sent home to their war-weary house.

Within three minutes, I’m on the IM line to OMIB, and he has immediately sicked his Beirut correspondents on it. Apparently, they are already on this evacuation morass like parakeets on power lines. Thank you OMIB. Power of the press, people, continue to believe in the power of the press.

It Doesn't Sound Good Over There

A few words from One Man in Baghdad:

"baghdad is the most twisted place i'll probably ever see. twisted
and unfunny are the worst combination and they are here in the
ugliest way."

International Crisis, Narrowly Averted

My phone has four missed calls. They mysteriously differ, but they are clearly all from One Man in Baghdad.

"Shit," I think. I send a text: "You ok?"

The phone rings.

"OMiB?" I say. "Hello?"

"Hello?" I hear. Then, nothing.

In the background I hear voices. A man, a woman, others. What language are they speaking?

"Hello? Hello, OMiB?" I say. I wait. I listen. Is this English they are speaking? Arabic? "Hello?"

I wait longer. I don't want to hang up. What if this is it? Kidnapped, OMiB has somehow dialed my number, repeatedly, and now can't talk, but won't hang up the line? "Hello? Hello? I can't hear you. Can you talk? Hello?"

My nerves are rankled. I wait longer, unsure if he is even there. The line goes dead.

It rings again.

"HELLO?" I shout.

"Hi," he says.

"ARE YOU OK?" I ask, heart pounding.

"Yeah," he says. "Getting drunk with friends," he says.

Thank you, OMiB, thank you for that. I now have managed to dramatically freak myself out, laughed at you, attempted to hear through the phone the "cool music" you guys are listening tonight (no, I really couldn't hear it), pledged to be your BFF and now I drink heartily from the bottle of scotch newly given to me by TCNKIK (let's say "KIK" for short). Fucking hell. And the night has just begun.

More From the IM Archives

1.

[Ladyfriend has a new girl crush.]

Ladyfriend: She writes mystery novels.

McBickle: Nice.

Ladyfriend: And claims to have invented the term "yuppie"

McBickle: UM. Not so much.

[Turns out she really did. Maybe.]

2.

[Zohan is the son of Mza’s mother’s friend. She was forced to have coffee with him.]

Mza: Zohan has an idea for a science fiction book he told me about.

Serial killer kills people using special DNA-coded spray.

What does one say to that?

I was like, “Good idea. Um.”

3.

[I have a date with a man I don't know well. I fear something may be…off…about him. We had a text message exchange about where to meet and this is what he sent back:]

“you KNOW i got no problem coming out to [REDACTED], baby! and i come aaaall the way out there for you..."

McBickle: Is he going to KILL ME?

Mza: Hahahaha.

McBickle: I’m not kidding! This is NOT FUNNY.

Mza: It is though. Walk down the middle of the street with him, so you can flag down cars if anything goes down. Do not go with him into a wooded area.

McBickle: Hahaha.

Ladyfriend: He's not a serial killer, he’s just... dorkily enthusiastic.

McBickle: Are we sure about this?

Mza: No.

McBickle: NO? Fuck.

Mza: Smiley faces PLUS exclamation points PLUS unironic caps.

McBickle: Maybe you can come vet him for me.

Mza: I've never seen that before.

McBickle: UghUGH.

Mza: Well, he is older.

McBickle: He did once ask me if I text, which is an older person question.

Mza: Sometimes the oldsters go overboard on things like the text message (last two words said in Borat accent). Yes.

McBickle: “The olds.”

UPDATE:

[From One Man in Baghdad, who kindly replied on his BlackBerry from a restaurant:]

McBickle: Have a date with this guy later who might be a zombie waiting to kill me or something. Unclear.

OMiB: Wow, good cheese. Don’t get dismembered. Love.

Living in La-La-Land (Llllamas)

A posting by the infamous Vex about thinking about "the children" (you know, the metaphorical ones) and not just yourself led me to post part of an e-mail from the Man in Baghdad I got yesterday. He’s describing a particularly old village in Iraq:

“the downside is only 1/2 hour of water a day and almost no electricity. water splurts through this one pipe at some unpredictable time and they all jam taps into it through holes they've punched, and try to fill tanks. it's a community thing. quick mobilization.”

Somehow that made me inexplicably miserable when I first read it yesterday. Only half an hour of water? Horrible. What a terrible life for these people. Today, upon reading it again, I feel somehow ridiculous. I mean, who am I to feel terribly for people who are working their asses off to make their lives better, when all I do these days is lament my own pitiful unhappiness with things other people—say, in tiny villages in Iraq—would feel blessed to have to deal with?

Onward and upward for those who try. It is a sorrowful journey for the self-defeating.